


Like Lightning Fire Consumes

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Christian Bible (Old Testament), תנ"ך | Tanakh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-30
Updated: 2005-10-30
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:03:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1643021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cain always longed for that which was forbidden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Lightning Fire Consumes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Mazoku

 

 

In the beginning.

*

In the beginning there were three. Cain remembered those days with pleasure. He remembered when he was the only one to suckle at his mother's breast, and she would croon soft songs as he curled up in her arms, even as she laughed and told him he was almost too big to sit on her lap anymore. His father would bring him the first plump ripe fig of the autumn and wipe off the pulp as it ran down his chin.

When five winters and summers had passed - or so his father told him, for he had no recollection of the earliest ones - his mother spent a day and a night screaming, and Cain thought his world was ending. His father did not leave their tent in all that time; Cain curled up outside at the entrance and heard his father shushing his mother and cursing Yahweh.

Cain wondered if this might be another punishment from Yahweh - he knew the thistles were curses, and the rocky ground, and all the things that made his father bent over and exhausted at the end of the day. He decided then that he hated Yahweh, he hated anyone who would make his mother howl in pain with cries worse than the time wolves got in their flock and tore ewes and lambs limb from limb.

And then, as dawn broke pink and gold, there was another cry, a different one, weaker and smaller, not a cry of pain but of puzzlement. Cain didn't know what to make of it until his father strode out of the tent, picked him up gently, and took him inside.

His mother had a small bundle in her arms, wrapped in the skins his father had just finished curing. The cries were coming from a little face peeking out of the bundle, red and wrinkled and all open, toothless mouth.

"This is your little brother, Cain," she told him, smiling with pride. "His name is Abel."

*

Cain no longer suckled at his mother's breast - that place was Abel's now.

The summer after the long drought it happened again. But Cain was older now, by four winters, and much wiser, so he saw the signs in his mother's swollen belly and lumbering gait and wasn't surprised when the screams started in the middle of one night and he was sent outside and told to look after his brother.

He explained to Abel as best he could: that Abel would be replaced, like Cain had been. Abel hadn't believed him: had hit him and called him a liar and burst into tears. But then they heard and saw their sister, and Abel came to understand.

*

On chill winter evenings they would gather around the fire once all the day's work was done, and their mother would tell them tales.

"Tell us about Eden," Cain would beg.

His mother's voice always became soft and wistful when she spoke of Eden.

"Eden was paradise, our home. The ground was blessed so all our crops were bountiful, and there were no thorny weeds or nettles or darnel to pull from the soil. The dew was fresh upon the ground every morning without fail, and all the animals obeyed our voice."

"Even the bears?" Abel would ask, wide-eyed.

"Even the bears."

"Can we go there some day?" Cain always asked, even though he knew the answer.

"No, son," his mother sighed sadly. "We can never go back. It is forbidden."

His father would interrupt before Cain could ask why, and send them to bed, and Cain would dream of a land where each day wasn't a struggle, would dream of things that were forbidden. Sometimes he'd wake up to hear his parents arguing; always the same argument, about fruit that should not have been eaten, and Abel would whimper and not quieten until Cain held him tight against the sound.

Cain didn't know why they were arguing, but he would fall back to sleep thinking of the wonders of a forbidden land and forbidden fruit.

He always wanted the forbidden.

*

Life was hard, but it was all he knew. Cain tilled the soil: he couldn't bear to care for their flocks only to lose them to wild animals, but Abel was good with the sheep and the goats, so that was well. Food was never plentiful, but it was sufficient, meat from their father's hunting, cheese their mother made from ewe's milk, bread from Cain's crops and fruit in season.

Their family grew as their mother had more daughters, more sisters for him and Abel. Sometimes they died when they had barely known life, his parents would weep, and he and Abel would dig a hole in the hard ground to bury them.

So Cain never became attached to them.

Abel was different though. Cain wanted to hate him sometimes, for stealing his mother's love, for being so beautiful with his silky curls and eyes the colour of cedar bark. But then Abel would hand him the choicest bite of the stew, or make him laugh, or give him a fine sheepskin to keep him warm, and Cain would forget that he meant to hate him.

*

When he and Abel were full grown, Cain learned that he loved Abel. Learned what love meant. That it wasn't just a fondness or gratitude, that it wasn't being bound together without choice like his parents were - _bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh_ \- but that it was something that stabbed him in the heart, and made his stomach churn, and his groin ache. It made him hunger for things not food, thirst for things not drink. It made him sad and joyful and angry, made him remember and forget, made him feel hot on winter days and shiver under the heat of the midday sun.

It consumed him, like lightning fire that blackened and broke even strong trees.

He thought of Abel when he took himself in hand early in the morning and spilled his seed hot on the ground, and he wished it were Abel's hand upon him. He thought of Abel when he was harvesting the crops, caressing the soft fronds on the ears of corn as he placed each one in the basket. He thought of Abel as he lay down at night and when he got up in the morning.

And when they bathed in the river, and water would trickle down the curve of Abel's buttocks, down the inside of his pale thighs, Cain longed to trace each water droplet with his fingers, his tongue. He wanted to feel the heat inside Abel, wanted to sink inside him so that they were no longer two but one. And then he would turn away and dip regretfully beneath the water to cool his ardour.

He knew it was forbidden.

But that did not quell his desire.

*

The day after Cain discovered in which direction Eden lay, he travelled there. He wrapped up bread and meat, filled a skin bottle from the stream, and set out before sunrise, before anyone else stirred. The trek took him three days of walking: away from the sun in the morning, following it in the evening.

On the dawn of the fourth day, he came to a mountain pass, and learned that he could go no further. A man - more than a man because he towered over Cain and glowed from within - stood at the mouth of the pass, and he had in front of him a flaming sword, turning endlessly though it did not rest on anything. He did not look at Cain, did not seem to look anywhere, but Cain knew that he had been seen, and that he would not be allowed to enter.

Cain did not have sufficient food for the long walk back, and he had come across few sources of water on his outward journey, but still he turned around. He had ached to see Eden - to walk in a land where there was no pain or fear, where each day brought happiness - but the ache inside him at the thought of not seeing Abel again hurt more even than the loss of that hope.

His pace was slower on his return: he did not think he had covered many furlongs before the sun reached its zenith and it was time to find shade and rest. He slept for a while, under the faint shelter of an algum tree, until he was woken, not by the falling of the sun into his eyes, but by a hand on his shoulder.

His brother Abel.

There was a look in Abel's eyes, even shadowed as they were, that Cain could not ignore. He'd caught sight of it before in his own eyes when he was thinking of Abel, reflected in a calm dish of water before he placed his finger in the water and the ripples chased away his image.

He reached out, both arms wide, and Abel kneeled before him until he was so close Cain could see himself in the dark centre of his brother's eyes. And then he closed his eyes, and saw no more, just felt tenderness and relief as Abel took his kiss and gave it back tenfold.

"Our parents feared for your life when you did not return the first night," Abel said as he tasted the salt and sweat on Cain's skin.

"I had to find it," Cain said, "I had to."

"You always want what you cannot have. That is why I guessed that I would find you here."

Cain laughed, and kissed Abel again.

"And this." Kissed his lips. "Is this something I cannot have?" Kissed the sharp bone beneath his shoulder.

Abel did not answer, not in words, but no answer was needed, not when Cain could feel yes in every span of the body leaning against him, in the hard length pressed against his loins. And finally he learned what it felt like to have Abel's hand upon him, to feel the rapture of the moment with his brother's hand tightly clasped around him. Learned the taste of his brother as he too reached ecstasy and spilled warmth into Cain's mouth.

*

They returned together, walking both by day and by night as the moon waxed strong enough to see by. The journey was not tedious, even when they did not speak. When one stumbled, the other was there to catch him, and when one tired, the other was by his side with a silent touch. And when they rested, they took pleasure in each other's company.

Nehushta, their youngest sister, was the first to run out and greet them when they reached home, joy clear in her chubby face. Their parents offered up thanks to Yahweh, and Abel sacrificed a firstling of his flock in honour of Cain's safe return. But Cain left his thanks to that night - gave them to the one who deserved them - when he crawled under the covers with Abel.

He still craved the forbidden, but no longer that which he could not have.

*

A/N: Should anyone wonder why I gave Cain and Abel sisters, Genesis chapter 5 and verse 4 reads: _And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters._

 


End file.
